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International Socialism, Autumn 1965

 

John Ashdown

Millsiana

 

From International Socialism, No.22, Autumn 1965, p.33.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

The New Sociology: essays in Social Science and Social Theory in honor of C. Wright Mills
Ed. I.L. Horowitz
Oxford, 58s 6d

This is a very mixed book, just as the work of C. Wright Mills himself is very mixed. Mills was a radical in a fine tradition; his sociology is often superficial, dependent on the colourful phrase rather than dose analysis, but his heart was, some of the time, in the right place. His dilemma was real, and his reputation rests upon its being the dilemma of many radical intellectuals today – if the working class is rejected as the agent of change, the intellectuals can only operate as a rather minor pressure-group on the powers-that-be to change policy; and if the world is so seriously out of joint that ‘pressure’ in fact only helps to legitimate the status quo, there is no avenue for expression. In practice, the later Mills was achieving such success as a leader of frustrated intellectuals (and that is not meant as a term of denigration) of very diverse persuasions that his radicalism seemed to be narrowing on their role rather than on society.

This ambivalence which is necessarily confused in any social group (so that the fate of the group [or class] becomes the fate of society) is exemplified in this book – some are concerned with the ills of sociology, some with ills of society. Naturally the two cannot be sharply differentiated for sociologists – a good sociology is one which illuminates a bad society – but a volume of this kind can indicate the priorities. The book divides into ten contributions on Mills and eighteen on topics in sociology. The stresses of contributions tend to fall on philosophic issues, most of them familiar from Mills himself, and on occasions all concrete issues seem to have drained away and we are left with the sort of discussion the New Left favoured in its early days: this does get a bit boring and repetitive, particularly when serious points are phrased in romantic and colourful language that detracts from that seriousness. For this reviewer at least, the contributions which are really interesing are those devoted to concrete issues (Powell on American socialism in Buffalo, 1909-21), not the occasional superficial observations on what silly things other sociologists think. Understanding still has to be nailed to change, and then the direction of change will nail understanding. American radical sociology is short on nails.

 
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